Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

Hyperion offers both CDs, and downloads in a number of formats. The site is also available in several languages.

Please use the dropdown buttons to set your preferred options, or use the checkbox to accept the defaults.

Don't show me this message again

Sechs Lieder, Op 68

Introduction

The years 1906 to 1918 marked a long hiatus in the song composition of Richard Strauss. Following the sensational appearance of Salome in 1905 he was busy consolidating his position as the most important opera composer of the new century, with the premieres of Elektra in 1908, Der Rosenkavalier in 1910 and the two versions of Ariadne auf Naxos in 1912 and 1916 respectively. It was only after he had completed the score of Die Frau ohne Schatten in 1917 that he began to find time to return to the Lied. The Op 68 Brentano-Lieder collection was to be his most significant cycle of songs until the creation of the Vier letzte Lieder thirty years later.

Clemens Brentano (1778–1842) was a notable figure in the German Romantic movement, an associate among others of Wieland, Herder, Goethe and Schlegel. Restless and unconventional by nature, he spent some years wandering the countryside with his guitar on his back like a medieval minstrel. His close and lifelong friendship with Achim von Arnim, who married his sister Bettina, provided some stability, and created the work for which they are both best known, the collection of German folk poetry known as Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Strauss himself set three poems from that collection, including Hat gesagt—bleibt’s nicht dabei, but no doubt recognizing that Gustav Mahler had already achieved all that was possible in this field, he turned in 1918 to six of Brentano’s original poems. Inspired by their highly charged imagery, he produced not only some of his most virtuoso vocal writing, but a series of intricately woven piano accompaniments that clearly owe their richness and fluency to his many years of writing for the opera orchestra.

Although Strauss is known to have had Elisabeth Schumann in mind for the Brentano-Lieder, she only performed the entire cycle on one occasion, in 1922. This is not surprising, since whereas the four central songs seem tailor-made for her clear, light soprano, in the first and last songs Strauss appears to have been thinking of a completely different cast of voice. In particular Lied der Frauen with its stormy texture and epic scale—at sixteen pages it is twice as long as any of the other songs—suggests a voice of far greater heft and stamina than is usually found among coloratura sopranos, and can easily lead to balance problems in the orchestral version. On the other hand, as Strauss’s biographer Norman del Mar points out, it is worth remembering that Strauss’s first Marschallin was also his first Zerbinetta.

A final background detail—the years to 1918 were also those in which Strauss became increasingly embattled with his publishers Bote & Bock, having unwisely signed an agreement in 1906 to give them his next set of songs. Given the high quality of the Brentano-Lieder it is not surprising that he chose to keep them in his bottom drawer, offering instead the satirical cycle Krämerspiegel and—when this was rejected—the Ophelia-Lieder.

Recordings

A further instalment in Hyperion’s major series, skilfully masterminded by accompanist Roger Vignoles, introduces the American soprano Kiera Duffy. The highlight of this balanced recital is the coloratura Op 68 Brentano-Lieder, which owes its rich ...» More

Apart from lyric verse Brentano’s other work included a number of short stories and a Romantic drama entitled Die Gründung Prags, inspired by a visit to Prague in 1811. This kindled an interest in Czech folklore—hence the reference in the opening song of the Sechs Lieder Op 68 to Bjelbog, the Bohemian god of light. With solemn harmonic colouring and arpeggiated piano chords Strauss’s opening has a suitably hymn-like character. Shifting keys underline the sense of transition from day to night, as well as the implied eroticism of Bjelbog’s spear penetrating the earth and the day’s embrace of night (the ‘chaste bride’), while the extended piano interlude towards the end indicates that Strauss was here, as later in the cycle, already thinking of the piano part in orchestral terms.

In contrast to An die Nacht, Ich wollt’ ein Sträusslein binden is one of Strauss’s most delicate and touching creations. Following in a distinguished tradition of songs from Schubert’s Heidenröslein onwards, where flowers speak to those who would pick them, it never overstates its case, but is notable for the gentle wit that prefers to sign off with a wistful shrug of the shoulders, echoed in the piano’s final postlude. Much of the material derives from the singer’s opening motif, with its little triplet coloratura figure.

‘Rustle, dear myrtle!
How silent the world is,
The moon, that shepherd of the stars,
In the bright Elysian fields,
Already drives the herd of clouds
To the spring of light,
Sleep, my friend, ah sleep,
Till I am with you again!

‘Rustle, dear myrtle!
And dream in the starlight,
The turtledove has already cooed
Her brood to sleep.
Quietly the herd of clouds travel
To the spring of light,
Sleep, my friend, ah sleep,
Till I am with you again!

‘Do you hear the fountains murmur?
Do you hear the cricket chirping?
Hush, hush, let us listen,
Happy is he who dies while dreaming;
Happy he who is cradled by clouds,
While the moon sings a lullaby;
Ah, how happily he can fly,
Who takes flight in dreams,
So that from heaven’s blue vault
He gathers stars as though they were flowers;
Sleep, dream, fly, I shall wake
You soon and be made happy!’

The next three songs are all in true Ariadne auf Naxos mode, in both texture and harmonic colouring, full of subtle and unexpected key-shifts. Säusle, liebe Myrthe! is a gentle lullaby to Nature full of rippling streams and cooing doves, all sonorously evoked in the accompaniment. Here Strauss’s control of mood is masterly: free of pyrotechnics, the voice’s gentle coloratura only serves to enhance the song’s drowsy languor.

Your song rang out! I heard it
Soaring through roses to the moon,
The butterfly, flying brightly in Spring,
You have turned into a virtuous bee;
I yearn for the rose
Since your song rang out!

Your song rang out! The nightingales complain—
Ah! sweet swansong of my peace—
To the moon, who listens and looks down from heaven,
And I must complain to the stars and the roses,
To where she flew,
She for whom this song was sung!

Your song rang out! No note was in vain,
The entire Spring, breathing love,
Has, while you sang, immersed itself
In the passionate stream of my life,
At sunset,
As your song rang out!

Here the piano part has an even more important role to play, for it is surely in the broad melody of the introduction that the beloved’s song can be heard, to which the voice then adds its ecstatic commentary. Throughout Strauss builds on successive utterances of the motto phrase, allowing time for illustrative touches, especially in the more muted second stanza, while the third verse is conceived as a seamless outpouring of song that can test the greatest of singers. Again the orchestral conception is evident, but nonetheless supremely effective as piano-writing.

The combination of worldly-wise cynicism and stratospheric virtuosity in Amor inevitably recalls Zerbinetta’s great aria, clothing an almost eighteenth-century conceit in a stunning mass of triplets, runs and trills. A real show-stopper, the pyrotechnics are not just icing on the cake, but totally apposite (Cupid’s wings are, after all, on fire), with the piano’s own acrobatics and astringently pert harmonies in full support.

When there’s a storm at sea,
The sailor’s wife knits at home,
But her heart is drawn
Towards the wild ocean.
With every wave that breaks
Roaring against the shore,
She thinks: he’s run aground, aground, aground,
Will never return to me on land!

When the thunder rages and roars,
The shepherdess spins at home,
But her heart floats up
Into the wild storm.
With every beam that flashed
Through the thunder’s anger,
She thinks: my shepherd, my shepherd, my shepherd
Will never return to me!

When the chasm shakes,
The miner’s wife sits at home,
But her loyal heart floats
Into the shaft’s dark horror.
With every tremor
That echoes in the shaking chasm,
She thinks: buried, buried, buried,
My boy is buried in the pitch-black earth.

When the battle rages and weapons clash,
The warrior’s wife sits at home,
But her fearful heart wanders
Through the battle’s roar.
With every shot, every echo
Of cannon against the mountainside,
She thinks: fallen, fallen, fallen,
My hero’s fallen for the fatherland.

But the storms pass over the mountains,
The thunder dies away,
Listen to how the rapturous, joyful lark
Sings its victorious song.
Ravens fly off!—The heavens clear,
O sun, pierce, pierce for me the clouds!
Across the mountains—joyful lark,
Sing, sing your bliss in my ear!

Victory wreathes with cypress and laurel
The grave and joyful head.
Lord! When victory shines down on me again,
With the green of mourning—
Then welcome be the starless night,
The Lord has given the star,
The Lord has taken, taken, taken,
Praised be the name of the Lord.

After the frippery of Amor, Strauss no doubt felt the need for an emotional counterweight, which is provided by this final song, Lied der Frauen. Extraordinary as it is, it has a precedent in one written twenty years before: Lied an meinen Sohn (see volume 4), to a text by Richard Dehmel, in which Strauss conjured up a storm at night with a piano part worthy of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. But whereas that song was slightly marred by its bombastic conclusion, Lied der Frauen totally lives up to its heroic scale.

A powerful tribute to the wives of men who daily face death—seamen, shepherds, miners or warriors—it begins with a tempestuous sequence in which the musical motifs only gradually emerge from the confusion. As the sun emerges and the lark announces peace, the texture noticeably lightens, but Strauss still maintains the surging momentum, even in the long peroration, which finds solace in praising the Lord who, paraphrasing the book of Job ‘hath given and hath taken away’. Strauss’s skilful handling of these final pages completes the arch that had begun with An die Nacht, the words ‘Dann sternlose Nacht sei willkommen’ providing a conscious verbal link.

Not surprisingly, this was the first of the six songs to be orchestrated by Strauss, in 1933 for the soprano Viorica Ursuleac, with the other five following in 1940. Since then they have become a staple of the repertoire in both piano and orchestral versions, though as noted seldom performed in their entirety.